Qualcomm and their Snapdragon 845 is the future of VR

Qualcomm has been inventing technology for the world since 1985. Before smartphones or autonomous cars, Qualcomm was laying down a foundation for the future with their groundbreaking technology. Qualcomm has continued to carve out new paths for 5G, artificial intelligence, IoT, and extended reality applications. Today, the company makes another step forward by announcing their Snapdragon 845 system, which could bethe future of virtual reality.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform has been engineered so that users can do even more with their mobile devices. It is fitted with the Qualcomm Spectra 280 ISP for premium camera and XR experience, which will capture up to 16 MP at 60 images per second. It has an Adreno 630 Visual Processing Subsystem, which includes GPU, VPU, DPU, and a 6DoF with SLAM and Adreno Foveation, boasting better graphics rendering and video processing than any other previous generation of their virtual reality system.

Even more, its AI platform uses the third generation Qualcomm Hexagon 685 DSP system, allowing for richer camera, voice, and XR gaming experiences, all upgrades that appear to be the future of virtual reality.

It also has an entirely new secure processing unit in order to protect the user’s personal data with tighter security, as biometrics used for authentication can be stored away in isolation. The Snapdragon X20 LTE modem with its 802.11ad multigigabit Wi-Fi and integrated 2×2 802.aaac offers up to 20 percent faster speak speed compared to the last generation. And, the Snapdragon 845 has an all day battery life and can even charge 50% of the unit inside of 15 minutes.

Features like full room-scale positional tracking through a pair of onboard cameras, eye-tracking, and 2K per eye resolution displays should help incentivize changing the market for the world of the future of virtual reality. What PC-based and gaming console based virtual reality systems enjoy now, mobile virtual reality users could enjoy soon as well. Qualcomm announced their plans for designing virtual reality controllers on their Snapdragon 845. For their support vision based options, their design could run similar to Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality controllers.

Although Qualcomm has only announced the Snapdragon 845 as a reference design, the landscape of virtual reality looks exciting. If more device manufacturers enter the game with Qualcomm and other leading companies in VR tech, investors can expect big things to come. VR tech has always been exciting for consumers, and with so many advancements in this past year alone, consumers should remain thrilled.